Easy Sex Change

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People often refer to the process of gender transition as a sex change, as in "He got a sex change." Though the term often refers to genital surgery, it conjures up images of a single full-body operation that can turn a burly man into a sexy woman, or vice versa.

In Real Life, gender transition for a transgender person is a lengthy process involving extensive hormone and psychological therapy. For example, in the United States, most doctors will not administer hormone therapy without a recommendation from a psychologist, who must first spend months evaluating the patient to make sure that they are mentally stable and won't have any regrets. Getting genital surgery requires at least a year of being on hormones and of living full-time as that gender. Additionally, the physical changes brought about by hormones take several years to complete, as with puberty. Those who do undergo cosmetic procedures (such as facial reconstruction) do not do them all at once, and they must recover from the procedures.

Trans folks must also deal with other problems both before and during their transitions. It is not uncommon for a trans person to lose some friends or partners after coming out. The results of transition are diverse, and the common saying is "your mileage may vary." Just like puberty, hormone therapy can yield vastly different results for different people, and some may be unsatisfactory.

Examples of this trope disregard all or most of the above. Not only is the Easy Sex Change much faster, but the physical, psychological, and social complications are also minimized. The physical transformation is usually highly effective, and sometimes accompanied by Magic Plastic Surgery (particularly when the role is played by different actors pre-op and post-op).

Attractive Bent-Gender is a common result. Not that this can't happen in Real Life, but recipients of the Easy Sex Change almost always come out looking like a Hollywood starlet or supermodel.

Sex change surgery that is reversed is another common signifier of the Easy Sex Change. That being said, the "reversed sex change" is not completely unheard of in Real Life - see, e.g., the story of British millionaire Charles Kane.

Examples:

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Anime and Manga

Franken Fran has a double example. Possibly justified by Fran quite frankly being crazy enough to do it, especially since she performs any surgery she thinks is warranted regardless of later psychological issues and believes "alive but in unimaginable, incurable psychological torment" to be preferable to "dead". Oddly enough, it's one of the few "happy" endings (though the couple in question is later revealed to have broken up after cheating on each other).

Wandering Son, which treats these types of issue more seriously in general, averts this. At one point, TransgenderCool Big Sis Yuki confides to Yoshino that her mother can't forgive her because she wanted to be a girl, "wanted it so bad." Which can imply that Yuki went through all the proper processes. It's also showing signs with the protagonists, who are slowly transitioning (well, as much as teenagers with parents who aren't letting them go to therapists can).

Averted in Pretty Face: Dr. Manabe insists on giving Rando a sex change (since he has a girl's face), and acts like this trope is real. Rando, on the other hand, knows better and beats up Manabe whenever he brings it up.

Semi-averted in The Day of Revolution: Kei/Megumi's gender reassignment goes fairly easily since she's already genetically female and physically intersex. However, everyone agreed to go through with it far too quickly and for fairly dubious reasons.

In He's Dedicated to Roses, the main heroine briefly (but seriously) contemplates getting a sex change operation seeing how her crush is in love with her crossdressing alter-ego and she doesn't want to hurt him by letting him know she's actually a girl. This idea is quickly shot down and isn't brought up again.

In The Vision of Escaflowne, it is revealed that Dilandau used to be an innocent little girl, and Allen Schezar's little sister at that. Although it's implied that there was a long, drawn-out process of some type required involving Emperor Dornkirk's "Fate Changing" experiments, which possibly involved some kind of probability-manipulating, extra-dimensional/quantum physics weirdness, but at the end, Dilandau reverts back to Celina and it's implied that she stays that way. This is not addressed in either the OVA or the manga; in the OVA, Dilandau is biologically male the entire time, and in the manga, the character is female and stays that way the whole time.

Marika from Bokura no Hentai averts this. She spends a while dressing up in private but eventually comes out to her mom after some friends tell her she should see a doctor. She spends a few weeks out of school, going to therapy and such, but ends up going to school as a girl.

Averted in Yuureitou. Tetsuo still looks feminine, in a bishonen way, despite being on testosterone for a while. He casually implies once he wants surgery but doesn't have the money.

Subverted in Kyou Kara Yonshimai. Kashiwa comes back from college specifically to save money on dorming due to her transitioning. One of her sisters even elaborates how expensive it is. Kashiwa's sisters at first think she had already gotten "the surgery" but she tells them she wouldn't do that without coming out to them first.

It's vague exactly how Yukari and Sora from Family Compo transitioned. It's implied they're both non-op and likely not on hormones (Sora still menstruates and they have some Unsettling Gender Reveal moments involving their genitalia and chests) but are able to pass perfectly nevertheless.

Comic Books

Averted in The Sandman story "A Game of You"; Wanda lives as a woman and appears to be taking hormones but won't get "the operation" because she's terrified of surgery. It later comes out that she was rejected and despised by her entire family, who all want to pretend that the whole "wanting to be a girl thing" never happened. Gender change appears to have been very hard for Wanda so trying to live as a man must have been even harder. After her death, she's shown as a happy, beautiful woman in the afterlife.

Played with in Runaways with Xavin, who uses their Skrull physiology to take on a female form in order to woo the lesbian Karolina, but who soon suspects that mere cosmetic changes aren't going to be enough to keep Karolina happy in the long run.

Played with in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century, where Orlando spontaneously changes gender every few years. While the transformation is faster than medical gender reassignment, it's still a slow process that takes several days and is implied to be deeply uncomfortable to Orlando.

Fan Fic

Discussed and averted in a The Penguins of Madagascar fic entitled "Princess"; Kowalski, the resident Mad Scientist, quite easily could give Julien male anatomy, but they decide it's a bad idea because it would raise uncomfortable questions from the humans and because Kowalski's inventions have a tendency to go horribly wrong.

In This World and the Next: gender reassignment surgery is performed on an unconscious Ron without his knowledge and he wakes up a woman.

In this Linkin Park fanfiction, "Chessi" Bennoda becomes a completely passing young woman with the help of a makeover in one day. The fic is loaded with pretty offensive misconceptions about being transgender. Hilariously enough, the writer is a trans man that wrote it before he identified as such.

Film

Averted in The Silence of the Lambs, when Hannibal says that the Serial Killer Buffalo Bill will probably be found to have been rejected by multiple gender reassignment clinics because he thinks he is a trans woman when he really just hates himself.

Lecter: Our Billy hates his own identity, you see. He always has, and he thinks that makes him a transsexual. But his pathology is a thousand times more savage and more terrifying. He wants to be reborn, you see.

Ironically, despite the film going out of its way to point out that Buffalo Bill is not transgender and merely thinks he is, the film was attacked upon release by people who thought that transgender people were being unfairly demonized in the film.

A subversion of this trope is central to the premise of the off-Broadway play and movie Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Hedwig's surgery is done with little preparation by a shady East German doctor, leaving Hedwig with the "Angry Inch" of the title.

Invoked in the Adam Sandler version of The Longest Yard. Adam's team, the underdogs of the movie, replace someone on the guards' team's steroids with female hormone pills. Not more than two days later, said guy is bawling and weeping, supposedly acting feminine because of the hormone. To make a long story short, hormones do not work that way. A more likely outcome from suddenly taking a huge dose of estrogen would simply be getting very sick, in various "normal" ways (headache, nausea, etc.) Emotional side effects are possible, but would probably require testosterone-blocking medication to be taken at the same time.

In Myra Breckinridge, the character Myron Breckinridge has a sex reassignment surgery that works so well that his new persona as Myra completely convinces everyone that she's been female all along...which she should, being played by Raquel Welch (with Rex Reed as Myron who tags along as Myra's more-or-less imaginary friend). Justified, as it turns out the whole movie is a dream the closeted Myron is having.

While not as "easy" for the patient as most examples, a dark take in The Skin I Live In is similarly unrealistic, as a surgeon does an involuntary sex change on the guy who raped his daughter. He also keeps him/her in isolation and uses him/her as a guinea pig for developing artificial skin.

Subverted in Bad Education. Ignacio is prevented from having one because he doesn't have enough money. All he manages to get are breast implants, and he still looks like a man in spite of that.

Literature

Members of The Culture can change sex at will, although it does take several months for the changes to gradually take place. Justified because they're ridiculously advanced transhuman post-scarcity beings who can also (for example) produce a variety of drugs and chemicals from specially-tailored glands within their bodies simply by choosing to do so.

Tanith Lee's Biting the Sun books describe an ultra-futuristic society with very easy sex and body changes. Officially, you are only supposed to change bodies once per month, but everybody flouts this rule all the time.

In John Varley's Eight Worlds series, sex changes are so commonplace that anyone who spends their life as just one is considered a little weird, and population control laws are: "one person, one child."

In the books Accelerando and Glass House by Charles Stross, people living in post-Acceleration times have completely mutable bodies: They can get a new body of either sex (or both, or neither) in as little as a kilosec (just under 17 minutes) - the time it takes an A-Gate to build it for them. This leads to phrases such as "I found myself in a female orthohuman body...".

Within Lois McMaster Bujold's A Civil Campaign, the saga of Lady Donna's sex change to Lord Dono shows that sex changes are relatively easy and painless with futuristic genetic technology, although Lord Dono comments that it does take time and his guy parts are still growing in. No mention of therapy is made although the character did go to Beta Colony, a planet known for pervasive (sex) therapy, and in fact Dono's stated reason for the change (Loophole Abuse in highly patriarchal Barrayar's inheritance laws) is at best highly dubious. It's possible that Dono deliberately avoids mentioning any mandatory therapy since a) he is seeking public office, b) his family is not known for their mental stability, and c) on Barrayar, therapy carries a stigma of presumed violent insanity. The process is also apparently quite possible to reverse, which would lead to some relaxation of the rules.

The book Trans-Sister Radio has Dana (MtF), a college professor, get his surgery done to become a her over the summer so that she can come back in the fall as female. (One is supposed to live as the other gender for a year before surgery even gets done, which Dana doesn't do.) The author seems to have sped up the process for drama, especially since Dana's girlfriend is a public school teacher and thus everyone in town objects to them. At one point in the book this trope is played straight, as a doctor discusses another MtF sex change (that he didn't perform) where the man's wife decided she was a lesbian so he had a sex change to stay with her, only to be then dumped because the wife decided she wasn't a lesbian after all.

Neil Gaiman's short story Changes features a pill (originally created as a cancer cure) that has the "side effect" of causing a painless, perfect, permanent yet easily reversible (just pop another one) sex change over night. The story follows the way society changes following that discovery, and towards its end years later, the very concept of gender has become completely ambiguous and the words used to describe it considered strange and outdated.

This happens to Mina Rush in "Deep in the Depths of Acme Warehouse". However, it was probably magic, as the object that caused the change was a dildo modeled after the plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix's penis found in the said Acme Warehouse.

I Am J averts and discusses this. J is a seventeen year old trans boy who discovers early in the book about trans people and transitioning. He begins taking hormones partway through the book. His friend Melissa doesn't quite understand what being transgender means until he thoroughly explains it. She heard that trans people "have surgery, and then they become the other gender" but J tells her otherwise.

The short story "Paradigms of Change" by Geoffrey A. Landis has an "X virus" accidentally developed from an experimental gene therapy. Most of the people infected by it (at least that we see) are not volunteers, and the Second Law of Gender Bending is very much averted, with frequent mention of the work to create a "Y virus" that will reverse the effects.

Discussed heavily in Bangkok 8, where Dr. Surichai brags about his artistry in turning Ussiri into Fatima, who is perfectly feminine, but he admits that a lot of time, money, and effort went into this transformation.

In Tales of the City, Anna Madrigal went under the knife as soon as the option became available, and by the 1970's, nobody seems to be able to tell that she is a trans woman.

Wonder Showzen: Mother Nature cuts off her own lady parts with a knife, then puts them in a bucket. She dies as a result of attempting surgery on herself. Then another puppet has sex with the bucket of bloody lady parts. It's just that kind of show.

Nip/Tuck had an episode with a MTF transperson becoming male again after realizing she really felt more comfortable being a gay male. Christian Troy does the surgery ASAP, without any of the prerequisites. Even assuming that Troy is an unscrupulous and unethical doctor, sexual reassignment surgery still doesn't work that way.

The Psych episode "Who Ya Gonna Call" had a man with three alternate personalities: a woman who wanted to have SRS, a confused normal guy, and a psychopath who had murdered the doctor to prevent his imminent surgery, although he wasn't taking hormones or undergoing any other precursors to SRS. Somewhat averted in that there was a psychologist involved, but the SRS process as presented was heavily compressed.

Averted in CSI in one episode, where they investigate the death of a woman and discover that she is a trans woman in the midst of transitioning to female, and has not yet had any genital surgery. They also meet a well-intentioned back alley doctor who explains how this trope is nowhere close to true in real life, and how the length of the process (both from a medical and bureaucratic standpoint) makes people turn to people like him even though it puts them in danger.

The sitcom Soap had almost the perfect example of this trope. In an early story arc, Jodie (Billy Crystal) decides to have a sex change to please his boyfriend. Despite no real life experience (aside from a bit of crossdressing), no hormonal therapy, no psych evaluation, still looking like what he is (a man), he gets admitted to a hospital to have his outie turned into an innie, and they're apparently quite willing to do it. He does not go through with it.

In the "Nobody's Perfect" episode of Karen Sisco, Karen hunts fugitive Louis DiNardo. Eventually, it turns out that Louis has had surgery to become "Lois". The timeline is a little vague, but certainly not enough time has elapsed for the requirements of ethical SRS medical treatment. While easy, the surgery is also thorough (Lois specifically mentions that she no longer has a penis, and that she "doesn't miss it"), and quite successful. While Louis is played by a male actor, Lois is played by Alexandra Billings, an attractive female actress — albeit one who once was a male herself.

Degrassi set themselves up to sidestep this whole part of the issue by putting Adam in Grade 11 at age fifteen, meaning he's on schedule to graduate from High School and therefore the show before he turns 18 and can begin physical transitioning. He was was retconned into a sophomore in the second half of Season 10 and then killed off while he was still pre-hormones.

Addressed (and averted) in an episode of Private Practice, where a patient is told that their procedure will have to be delayed because Sheldon suspects that although the desire for the operation is genuine, there are psychological issues that need to be addressed to ensure everything goes smoothly. He turns out to be right when the patient attempts suicide upon being given this news, and offers to help them get through these issues so she can complete the process of becoming a woman.

In the much-derided Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Profit and Lace", Quark is forced to pretend to be a woman and conduct a meeting with an important Ferengi businessman (on the subject of women's rights on Ferenginar) while his mother is out of commission. Apparently, 24th-Century technology allows them to perform a complete sex change operation on him in just a few hours, and then change him back to a man the following day (presumably they kept his... male parts in bio-stasis or something). Granted, this is Star Trek, where plastic surgery to make someone look like a different species is apparently an outpatient procedure.

The Doctor in Star Trek: Voyager has it even easier in "Renaissance Man" when the situation requires him to impersonate a pregnant Lieutenant Torres: instruct the computer to change him into her, and then adjust parameters to simulate her pregnancy as well.

In the Torchwood episode "Greeks Bearing Gifts", Jack claims that he started paying closer attention to his co-workers after a male colleague began "acting strange" right before going on several weeks leave and returning as a woman named Vanessa. Since Jack only mentions this in passing, it's possible that sex changes are handled differentlyin the 51st century, and it's always possible that Jack is just that oblivious.

Partly averted for comedy effect in The League of Gentlemen, where Barbara of Babs' Cabs is a transwoman who is some years into the process ("I've only been on the hormone treatments eighteen months. Me nipples are like bullets.") and dresses and presents as a woman, and is referred to and treated as a woman by all the other inhabitants of Royston Vasey, but still speaks with a deep, growly voice and has excessively hairy arms is to all intents and purposes clearly still physically very much a man. She describes in some wince-inducing detail the surgery she's going to be getting. Later events put Babs clearly in the realm of this trope, however, when she gets pregnant and delivers twins.

In Mendol Ikemen, the manager Saeko apparently had one. But the characters keep referring to her as a man after The Reveal, suggesting she's merely a Creepy Crossdresser (or, perhaps, that the characters are just really insensitive?)

Averted in the Picket Fences episode "Pageantry". A schoolteacher is found to be transgender which causes problems with the townsfolk. Jill Brock defends the transgender individual's credibility by explaining that undergoing such a process involves a number of steps and is not something done on a whim.

Averted in The L Word with the character introduced initially as Moira, but is soon known as female-to-male transsexual (FTM) Max. The characterization was generally pretty awful, and much of the actual science was off - being on testosterone for as long as he'd been, it would be damn near impossible to get pregnant, even with no birth control methods being used; also, "roid rage" is a myth, and as such couldn't possibly be exacerbated by testosterone obtained illegally. Non-prescribed testosterone's risks are vastly associated with the substance either being doctored or effectively "overdosing" - after a certain point, testosterone reaches maximum saturation in the body and the remainder is converted into estrogen, which is why non-trans bodybuilders using it can experience shrinking of testicles and breast growth. But he did hold a benefit to pay for his chest surgery (breast reduction/chest masculinization), which meant he couldn't afford even the more basic and less expensive of the "sex change" surgeries. Just FTM chest surgery ranges runs about $8k in reality, not including travel, time off work, etc.

The Alex-to-Alexis transition in Ugly Betty took quite a long time and involved several episodes featuring Alexis wrapped up in bandages while recovering from the surgery. On the other hand, she did come out looking like Rebecca Romijin, so....

Nao from Kinpachi-sensei averts this. He wants surgery now but is told by a doctor it's a long process. He's only fifteen and won't be allowed to go on hormones until age twenty, age eighteen with parental consent. It would take two to three years of hormones until he can get any surgery and even then he'd need a lot of therapy beforehand. Nao's understandably distraught.

Music

Played with in the NOFX song "My Vagina", which is sung from the perspective of a trans woman who went through an operation. The singer complains about remembering to put the seat down when she uses the toilet and having to be more thorough in cleaning herself, but considers it worth it to be able to hang out with lesbians.

Professional Wrestling

In the Japanese promotion FMW, we have the strange case of Gosaku, who underwent a sex change and became Asuza Kudo. Then she decided to get changed back, and somehow became the half-spider Bio-monster DNA in the process. Japanese wrestling is weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeird.

Tabletop Games

Transhuman Space includes this as part of the general high-biotech transhumanist style of the setting, and quite a lot of people are said to change, permanently or temporarily. However, it doesn't seem to come up much in the game beyond this mention.

In Eclipse Phase a sex change requires nothing more than twelve hours in a Healing Vat. There's also a fairly inexpensive Sex Switch biomod that allows one to change sexes at will, though it takes a week, but at least you're out and about during the change.

Shadowrun: Due to advances in cybertech, biotech, and genetech, sex changes have become relatively cheap, easy to perform procedures. To the point that notable runner Plan 9 has apparently had so many sex change operations that they can't remember which sex they started out as, over the course of just a few years.

Video Games

In BioShock it is stated in an audio log by Dr. Steinman that Adam makes this easy.

Circuits Edge, the 1989 CRPG based on George Alec Effinger's Marīd Audran series (see Literature, above), likewise features several characters who have had Easy Sex Changes (though it's not an in-game option for the player/Audran himself.)

A documentary about Poison's (from Final Fight) gender identity as a trans women jokes about her being stated to be a new half (term for pre op trans women with male genitalia) in Japan but post op with female genitalia in USA with a cartoon segment. In said segment, Poison is on a flight from Japan to America, and upon reaching American territories, a doctor rushes up to her with a syringe and surgical tools to change her sex before they land.

In Saints Row 2, 3 and 4, you can get a sex change for just five hundred dollars at the plastic surgeon. And not only is it cheap, it's instantaneous! (You can also go from white to black, or black to Hispanic, or white to Asian, green or blue, change from being skinny as a nail to morbidly obese, or anything else you can think of.) In the third game, this is necessary if you play as a female Boss since one mission requires you to get plastic surgery to become Cyrus Temple and infiltrate a ship.

Discussed in Dragon Age: Inquisition. Apparently magic makes it fairly easy to physically transform one's sex. The problem is that magic is heavily stigmatized in non-Tevinter nations throughout Thedas, and even many Tevinter citizens are still incredibly wary of magic. Case in point: transgender character Krem (who is Tevinter) admits that he would never let magic go near his body to change "all the way".

Xenoblade Chronicles X allows you to change your character's gender once you complete a side mission. Since your body isn't human but rather a mimeosome, Yardley's machine is easily capable of changing every appearance, including gender.

After a patch to The Sims 4, partially or even fully changing a Sim's sex - to the tune of dramatic body and voice changes and adding/removing the ability to become pregnant and impregnate others - can be done at a mirror or dresser by any teenage-or-older Sim at any time.

Aversion in High Maintenance, a comic centering on a transgender vigilante and her transitioning friend/sidekick. It might help that the writer is transgender.

In the Jet DreamRemix Comic, NATO scientists have re-engineered the bioweapon Virus-X into a viable Gender Bender. Unable to replicate the Western effort, Soviet scientists perfected the Easy Sex Change. While considered quite inferior and much more painful, this surgical process is much more widely available, and a powerful tool for the Reds in the "Cool War" to win over the world's teens.

Averted and pointed out in Khaos Komix, and the author would know, from personal experience. Though the pre-transition was unusually easy, and they pass very well.

One of the many possible modifications offered by GavCorps Diversity Engineering division in Schlock Mercenary. Somewhat justified given the already established medical technology in the 31st century (quite a few characters have had new & different bodies regrown from just their severed heads).

Comes up a lot, sometimes subverted, sometimes played straight, in Unicorn Jelly and other works by Jennifer Diane Reitz, who is herself transsexual. Played straight in To Save Her, thanks to Kaye's Mover containing incredibly advanced medical technology. For a machine that can grant immortality and resurrect a dead human-crystal hybrid after an explosion tore her to pieces, something like a sex change is piece of cake.

Presented mostly realistic for Venus Envy (also by a real life transsexual). Though Zoe has been on hormone treatment for months she has yet to develop any substantial breasts, and wears a padded bra instead. Plus the rest of her "equipment" is still intact, which occasionally causes problems...

In Umlaut House Rick invented a gender bender ray that changes someone's sex instantly and implied to be completely, judging by his "28 days" comment when Voltair accidentally used it. It's later shown that he made it to help his "colleague" Dr. Peggy Seus (born as "James")

Ted from El Goonish Shive long ago invented a device that allows him to change a person's biological sex (and other features) essentially at will. In fact, his obsession with transforming himself and his friends into the opposite sex could have been seen as somewhat creepy... until it's revealed that he's gender fluid, and was using the tech to help him wrestle with his own gender identity. He actually used the change ray to walk around school as a girl for several days, but he was already so effeminate as a guy that no one noticed.

Web Original

The round robin story H! Flash had this very heavily implied to have happened to a character at the end of one of the chapters. The next writer, however, hated this trope and had "the operation" turn out to simply be exploratory surgery in preparation for the theoretically more realistic reassignment surgery to follow. The author of the previous chapter was not well pleased.

Averted in The Salvation War series. The character 'kitten' (small K not a typo; it's complicated) is partly inspired by someone known to the author who went through the same process herself.

In their crossover review of Myra Breckinridge, The Cinema Snob and Diamanda Hagan discuss the sex change with (unhappy to be cameoing) trans activist Zinnia Jones, who notes that a) telling Myron right before the surgery that once the penis is gone it's gone for good is rather late to be mentioning that, and b) given that Myron's still presenting as a man (complete with facial stubble) she would have thought Myron was FTM rather than MTF.

Averted hard with Generator. She did manage to get a fully successful transformation at one point with the BIT-Splicer, but then later events reversed it, and at the same time made conventional SRS impossible in the future due to her new Healing Factor. Eventually, some doctors found a solution involving a less conventional surgical approach, but it remains to be seen how successful it will be.

Zig-zagged with Grace Goodkind. While the Devisor drug treatment she got was less intrusive and more effective than conventional SRS would have been, it still took several weeks, and included several additional rounds of plastic surgery to bring it to her desired form - which was not so much female but intersexed in any case. Furthermore, it came at the end of several years of gender therapy and secret use of hormone suppressants, and the treatment itself was incredibly dangerous. Grace has stated that the only reason she took such a drastic approach was because she knew how the family would react, and needed to do it as quickly and silently as possible to avoid them stopping her.

Western Animation

The South Park episode "Mr. Garrison's Fancy New Vagina" doesn't specify how much time passes from the operation to "her" first public outing (after which he went home to Mr. Slave the very same night), but it can't have been very long. (As one might expect from such an overnight sex change, Garrison never really looks much like a woman, let alone a supermodel, though he does somehow get curvy hips and a pair of breasts as part of his new configuration.)

In the Futurama episode "Bend Her", Bender becomes a woman to cheat at the Olympics. The procedure involves changing out his male oil for female oil and snipping off his antenna. The operation also involves hitting his body with a hammer until it looks vaguely feminine. To be fair, Professor Farnsworth does give Bender some disclosure, about the danger of Bender's being "trapped forever between the alreadyill-defined robot sexes." Plus, y'know, he's a robot.

Frylock also performed a sex-change operation on Carl (against his will) to prevent him from getting his dick cut off. It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. Or rather, it didn't. The exact line was something like, "I have an idea, but it's not very good." Ripped off. Ouch. It also hurts for Carl.

In The Venture Bros., Colonel Hunter Gathers' operation is remarkably superficial - he gains large breasts and (apparently) a vagina, but remains the same in every other way. The easiness of sex changes on this show is primarily demonstrated by the fact that Hunter gets a second one, revealing both to be part of a long plan.

A flashback in the Superjail! episode "Jailbot 2.0" shows that Alice underwent a rather quick hormonal transition to try to become an attractive woman, in hopes of finally getting to date her old warden. However, she then found out that he was a gay man, and once he discovers she changed, he fired her. Subverted a bit in that Alice is still visibly brawny, deep-voiced, and hasn't "gotten it removed" (as she states in the season 2 finale).

Family Guy: In "Quagmire's Dad", the titular character goes in for surgery, and comes out a few (onscreen) minutes later looking like a mannish woman. No time needed to heal, and ready to have sex with an unknowing Brian right away!

Callie get a sex change to get a job as New York Ambassador to Atlantis. At the end of the episode, just as suddenly as she changed into a man, she's mostly back to normal, but, in bed, Mark mentions her needing "a few more surgeries." From then on out, though, she's back to normal.

An older episode had Mark himself transformed into looking like his roommate's ex-girlfriend, hoping to help him get over her. Unfortunately for Mark, seeing how his change was a curse that made him rapidly age until he had sex with a man, he didn't turn back so easily. The initial easiness is explained by Leonard Did It.

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